Himself, he took one of the long, curved blades. The major, Leclair,
and Ferrara--an expert swordsman he had been, in the Italian
army--possessed themselves of the others.

Bohannan whistled his scimitar through the air.

"Very fine I call it!" he exclaimed, with a joyful laugh. "Some little
game of tag, what? And our Moslem friends are still 'it!' We're still
ahead!"

"And likely to be, till our friends bring powder, mine that door, and
blow it in!" The Master added: "We've still a few minutes--maybe more.
Now, then--"

A shrill cry in French, from Lebon, drew all eyes away to the left of
the small chamber.

"_Voilà_!" the lieutenant's orderly was vociferating. They saw his
distorted, torture-broken hand wildly gesticulating toward the floor.
"My Lieutenant, behold!"

"In the name of God, what now?" Leclair demanded, scimitar in hand.
The silver lamps struck high-lights from that gleaming blade, as he
turned toward his orderly. Never had he seen the man seized and shaken
by excitement as at this moment. "What hast thou found, Lebon? What?"

"But behold--behold!" choked the orderly. Articulation failed him. He
stammered into unintelligible cries. The Legionaries crowded toward
him. And in the dumb stupefaction that overcame them, the roaring
tumult at the door was all forgotten. The sentence of death hanging
above them, faded to nothing.

Even the Master's cold blood leaped and thrilled, at realization of
what he was now beholding as the silver lamps swung from out-stretched
hands. Bohannan, for once, was too dazed for exuberance.

Only the Master could find words.

"Well, men," said he, in even tones. "Here it is, at last. We're
seeing something no Feringi ever saw before--the hidden treasure of
Jannati Shahr!"




CHAPTER XLV


THE JEWEL HOARD

Men do strange things, at times, when confronted by experiences
entirely outside even the limits of imagination. At sight of the
perfectly overwhelming masses of wealth that lay there in square pits
chiseled out of the solid gold, most of the Legionaries reacted like
men drunk or mad.

The hoard before them was enough to unbalance reason.

Leclair began to curse with amazing fluency in French and Arabic,
while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol--stolid
Englishman though he was--had to make a strong effort to keep his
teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on
the jaw, burst out laughing, waving their arms extravagantly. Simonds
shouted jubilation and began to jump about in the most extraordinary
fashion. Wallace sat down heavily on the floor, held his lamp out over
one of the pits and stared with blank incomprehension.

As for the major, he dropped to his knees, threw down his weapons and
plunged his arms up to the elbows in the sliding sparkle of the gems.
To have heard him babble, one would have given him free entrance into
any lunatic asylum.

The only two who had remained appreciably calm were "Captain Alden"
and the Master. But even they, as fully as all the rest, forgot the
impending menace of attack. For a moment, even their ears were deaf
to the muffled tumult outside the door, their senses dulled to every
other thing in this world save the incredible hoard there in the
golden pits before them.

Pain, exhaustion, defeat ceased to be, for the Legionaries. Ruin and
the shadow of Azraël's wing departed from their minds. For, bring what
the future might, the present was offering them a spectacle such as
never before in this world's history had the eyes of white men rested
on.

Not even a man _in extremis_ could have turned away his gaze from the
unbelievable masses of shimmering wealth in those square pits of gold.

Fairy tales and legends, "Arabian Nights," and all the mystic lore
of the East never conjured forth more brain-numbing plenitudes of
fortune, nor painted more stupefying beauty, than now gleamed up from
those eight excavations hewn in the dull, soft metal.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" Leclair kept monotonously repeating. "_Mais, nom de
Dieu!_ Ah, the pigs--ah, the sacred pigs!"

Disjointed words from the others--cries, oaths, jubilations--filled
the low-arched chamber, mingling in the stuffy air with lamp-smoke and
the dull scent of blood and dust and sweat.

Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded.
And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a
dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the
gems, dredged up fistfuls and let them rain down crepitantly, again.

The sight was one very hard to grasp with any concrete understanding,
harder still to render in cold words. At first, it gave only a
confused impression of colors, like those in some vivid Oriental
rug. The details escaped observation; and these changed, too, as the
swaying of the lamps, in excited hands, shifted position.

A shimmer of unearthly light played over the pits, like the thin,
colored flames at the edge of a driftwood fire. Soft, opalescent
gleams were blent with prismatic blues, greens, crimsons. Melting
violets were stabbed through by hard yellows and penetrant purples.
And here an orange flash vied with a delicate old rose; there a rich
carnation sparkled beside a misty gray, like fading clouds along the
dim horizons of fairyland.

The Master murmured: "It's true, then--partly true. Rrisa knew part of
it!"

"Not all?" asked the woman.

"I hardly think the Caliph el Walid's gold was ever brought to Jannati
Shahr," he answered. "Coals to Newcastle, you know. And these jewels
are not all uncut. Some are finely faceted, some uncut. But in the
main Rrisa spoke the truth. He told what he believed."

"Yes," assented the woman. Then she added: "Spartan simplicity, is it
not? No elaborate coffers. Not even leather sacks. Just bins, like so
much wheat."

"The shining wheat of Araby!"

"Of the whole Orient!"

They fell silent, peering with fixed attention. And gradually some
calm returned to the others. At the door, too, the turmoil had ceased.
No doubt the Jannati Shahr men, baffled, had sent for much gunpowder
to blow in the massive planking. That silence became ominous.

Still the Legionaries could take no thought of anything but the
Caliph el Walid's hoard. As they stood, squatted, or knelt around
the pits--pits about two and a half feet square and deeper than the
deepest thrust of any arm--it seemed to them that bottomless lakes
and seas of light were opening down, down below them into unfathomed
depths of beauty.

Such beauty caused the soul to drink nepenthes of forgetfulness.
Hardships, wounds, blood, pain, menace of death faded under that
spell. That the Legionaries were trapped at the bottom of a vast
rabbit-warren, with swarms of Moslem ferrets soon to rush upon them,
now seemed to have no significance.

Tranced, "indifferent to Fate," the adventurers peered on greater
wealth of jewels than ever elsewhere in this world's history had been
garnered in one place. The liquid light of the hoard flashed strange
radiances on their tanned, deep-lined faces, now smeared with sweat
and dust, with powder-grime and blood. Their eyes were beholding
unutterable rainbows, flashings and burning glows like those of the
Moslem's own Jebel Radhwa, or Mountain of Paradise.

Each of these jewels--several million gems, at the least
computation--what a story it might have told! What a tale of remotest
antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What
a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of
Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese
pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim
starlight! Of passion and of pain!

On what proud hand of Sultan, emir, cadi, prince, had this huge ruby
burned? On what beloved breast or brow of princess, nautch-girl,
concubine--yes, maybe of slave exalted to the purple--had that
fire-gleaming diamond blazed?

From Roman times, from Greek, from ancient Jerusalem, from the
fire-breathing shrines of Baal at long-dead Carthage, perhaps, this
topaz might have come. This sapphire might have graced the anklet of
some beauty of old Nile, ages before King Solomon wielded the scepter,
ages even before the great god Osiris reigned.

That amethyst might have been loot of the swift black galleys of Tyre,
in joyous days when men's strong arms took what they could, of women
or of gems, and when Power was Law!

Imagination ran riot there, gazing down upon those jewel-pits. In them
lay every kind of precious stone for which, from remotest antiquity,
men had cheated, schemed, lied, fought, murdered. The jewels showed
no attempt at sorting or classification. With true Oriental
_laissez-faire_, they were all mingled quite at random; these gems,
any chance handfuls of which must have meant an incalculable fortune.




CHAPTER XLVI


BOHANNAN BECOMES A MILLIONAIRE

Like men in a dream, after the first wild emotions had died, the
Legionaries peered down into this sea of light. Smoke from the lamps
rose toward the dim, low-arched roof. Blood from the Maghrabi's wounds
slowly spread and clotted on the golden floor.

Without, a confused murmur told of resuming preparations to smash in
the door. And through it all, the dry clicking of the gems made itself
audible, as the major sifted them with shaking fingers.

"Well, men," the Master laughed dryly, "here they are! Here are the
jewels of Jannati Shahr. Old Bara Miyan would probably have given us a
peck or two of them, for Myzab and the Great Pearl Star and the Black
Stone, if those hadn't been destroyed--"

"How do you know they've been destroyed?" the major cried. "How do you
know but what we'll be rescued, here?"

"If the bombardment had been going to begin, I think we'd have heard
something of it, by now. My judgment tells me there'll be no explosive
dropped on Jannati Shahr.

"We've got to fight this thing through, unaided. And at any rate, we
don't have to limit ourselves to a peck or two of jewels. We've got
them all, now--or they've got us!"

The irony of his tone made no impression on Bohannan. His mercurial
temperament seemed to have gone quite to pieces, in view of the hoard.
He cried:

"Come on, then, boys! Fill up!"

And with a wild laugh he began scooping the gems, hap-hazard, into the
pockets of his torn, battle-stained uniform. Jewels of fabulous price
escaped his fingers, like so many pebbles in a sand-pit, and fell
clicking to the golden floor. With shaking hands the major dredged
into the pit before him, mad with a very frenzy of greed.

"Stop!" cried the Master, sternly. "No nonsense, now!"

"What?" retorted Bohannan, angrily. His bruised, cut face reddened
ominously.

"Drop those jewels, sir!"

"Why?"

"Principally because I order you to!" The Master's voice was cold,
incisive. "They're worthless, now. No make-weights! We can't have
make-weights at a time like this. To think of jewels at such an hour!
Throw them back!"

A flash of rage distorted the major's face. His blue eyes burned with
strange fire.

"Never!" he shouted, crouching there at the brink of the jewel-pit.
"Call it insubordination, mutiny, anything you like, but I'm going to
have my fill of these! Faith, but I _will_, now!"

"Sir--"

"I don't give a damn! Jewels for mine!" His voice rose gusty, raw,
wild. "I've been a soldier of fortune all my life, and that's how I'm
going to die. Poor, most of the time. Well, I'm going to die rich!"

His philippic against poverty and discipline tumbled out in a torrent
of wild words, strongly tinged with the Irish accent that marked his
passionate excitement. He sprang to his feet, and--raging--faced his
superior officer. He shouted:

"Sure, and I've knocked up and down this rotten old world all my life,
a rolling stone with never enough to bless myself with. And I've gone,
at the end, on this wild-goose chase of yours, that's led you and
me and all of us to a black death here in the bottom of a damned,
fantastic, Arabian city of gold!

"That's all right, dying. That was in the bargain, if it had to be
done. Two-thirds of us are dead, already, a damn sight better men
than I am! We've been dying right along, from the beginning of this
crack-brained Don Quixote crusade. That's all right. But, faith! now
that it's my turn to die, by the holy saints I'm going to be well paid
for it!"

Bohannan, eyes wild, struck his heaving breast with a huge fist and
laughed like a maniac.

"That's all right, you reaching for your gun!" he defied the Master.
"Go ahead, shoot! I'm rich already. My pockets are half full. Shoot,
damn you, shoot!"

The Master laughed oddly, and let his hand fall from the pistol-butt.

"This," said he quite calmly, "is insanity."

"Ha! Insanity, it is? Well then, let me be insane, can't you? It's a
good way to die. And I've _lived_, anyhow. We've all lived. We've all
had a Hell of a run for our money, and it's time to quit.

"Shoot, if you want to--a few minutes more or less don't matter. But,
faith, I'll die a millionaire, and that's something I never
expected to be. Fine, fine! Give me a minute more, and I'll die
a multi-millionaire! Sure, imagine that, will you? Major Aloysius
Bohannan, gentleman-adventurer, a multi-millionaire! That's what I'll
be, and the man don't live that can stop me now!"

With the laugh of a madman, the major fell to his knees again beside
the pit, plunged his hands once more into the gleaming, sliding mass
of wealth, and recommenced cramming his pockets.

The Master laughed again.

"It's quite immaterial, after all," said he. "I led you into this.
And now it's very nearly a case of _sauve qui peut_. The sooner your
pockets are full, to the extreme limit, the sooner something like
reason will return to you. Jewels being of interest to a man at
death's door--it's quite characteristic of you, Bohannan. Help
yourself!"

"Thanks, I will!" Bohannan flung up at him, blood-drabbled face pale
and drawn by the flaring lamplight. "A _multi_-millionaire! Death? I
should worry! Help myself? Faith, I just will, that!"

"Anyone else, here, feel so disposed?" the Master inquired. "If so,
get it over and done with. We've got fighting ahead, and we'd better
quench whatever thirst there is for wealth, first."

No one made any move. Only Bohannan's mind had been unsettled by the
hoard, to the extent of wanting to possess it. Now that death loomed,
empty pockets were as good, to all the rest, as any other sort.

"You're all a pack of damned fools!" Bohannan sneered. "You could die
richer than Rockefeller, every man-jack of you, and you--you don't
want to! Sure, it's _you_ that's mad, not me!"

No one answered. They all stood peering down at him, their faces
tense, wounded, dirty; their eyes gleaming strangely; the shadow of
Azraël's wing already enfolding them. Then, a few detached themselves
from the little group and wandered off into the gloom, away from the
pits. Leclair muttered:

"I prefer loading my automatic, to loading my pockets! Odd, the major
is, eh? Ah well, _à chacun sa chimère!_"

"Everybody's weapons fully loaded?" the Master demanded. "Be sure they
are! And don't forget the mercy-bullets, men. These Arabs are rather
ingenious in their tortures. They make a specialty of crucifying
unbelievers--upside down. That sort of thing won't do, for us not for
fighting-men of the Legion!"

Bohannan, laughing, stood up. Every pocket was a-bulge with
incalculable wealth.

"Now I'm satisfied," he remarked in more rational tones. "I reckon I
must be worth more money, as I stand here, than any human being that
ever lived. You're looking at the richest man in the world, gentlemen!
And I'm going to die, the richest. If that's not some distinction,
what is? For a man that was bone-poor, fifteen minutes ago! Now, sir--"

A sudden cry interrupted him. That cry came from "Captain Alden."

"Here! Look here!"

"What is it?" demanded the Master. He started toward her, while
outside the door sounded dull commands, as if the Arabs-now organized
to effective work-were already preparing to blow open the last barrier
between them and their victims.

"What now?" the Master repeated, striding toward her.

"_See! See here!_"




CHAPTER XLVII


A WAY OUT?

The woman stood pointing into a black recess at the far end of the
crypt. All that the Master could discern there, at first, was a
darkness even greater than that which shrouded the corners of the
vault.

"Light, here!" he commanded. Ferrara swung a lamp, by its chain,
into the recess. They saw a low, square opening in the wall of dull,
gleaming metal.

"A passage, eh?" the Master ejaculated.

"Maybe a _cul-de-sac_," she answered. "But--there's no telling--it may
lead somewhere."

"By Allah! Men! Here--all of you!"

The Master's voice rang imperatively. They all came trooping with
naked or slippered feet that slid in the wet redness of the floor.
Broken exclamations sounded.

Seizing the lamp, the Master thrust it into the opening, which
measured no more than four feet high by three wide. The light smokily
illuminated about three yards of this narrow passage. Then a sharp
turn to the right concealed all else.

Whither this runway might lead, to what peril or what trap it might
conduct them, none could tell. Very strongly it reminded the Master
of the gallery in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, which he had seen
twelve years before--the gallery which in ancient days had served as a
death-trap for treasure-seekers.

That gallery, he remembered, had contained a cleverly hidden stone
in its floor which once on a time had precipitated pilferers down a
vertical shaft more than a hundred feet, to death, in the bowels of
that huge, terrifying mausoleum.

Was this passage of similar purpose and design? In all probability,
yes. Oriental ways run parallel in all the lands of the East.

Nevertheless, the passage offered a means of escaping from the crypt.
And there, with the dead Maghrabi mudirs, the Legionaries could not
stay. In a few minutes now, at most, the men of Jannati Shahr would be
upon them.

"Faith, what the devil now?" exclaimed Bohannan, now seeming quite
rational, as he peered into the cramped corridor. "Where to Hell does
this lead?"

"Just where you've said, to Hell, it's far more than likely," the
Master retorted. "Come, men, into it! Follow me!"

He stooped, lamp in one hand, simitar in the other, and in a most
cramped posture entered the passage. After him came Leclair, the
woman, Bohannan, and the others.

The air hung close and heavy. The oppression of that stooping
position, the lamp-smoke, the unusual strain on the muscles, the
realization of a whole world of gold above and all about them, seemed
to strangle and enervate them. But steadily they kept on and on.

The turning of the passage revealed a long, descending incline, that
sloped down at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees. A marked rise in
temperature grew noticeable. What might that mean? None could imagine,
but not one even thought of turning back.

The walls and floor in this straight, descending passage were now no
longer smooth, arabesqued, polished. To the contrary, they showed a
rough surface, on which the marks of the chisel could be plainly seen
as it had shorn away the yielding metal in great gouges. Moreover,
streaks of black granite now began to appear; and these, as the
Legionaries advanced, became ever wider until at last the stone
predominated.

The Master understood they were now coming to the bottom of part of
the golden dyke. Undeviated by the hard rock, the tunnel continued to
descend, with here and there a turn. Narrowly the Master scrutinized
the floor, tapping it with the simitar as he crept onward, seeking
indications of any possible trap that might hurl him into bottomless,
black depths.

Quite at once, a right-angled turning opened into a small chamber not
above eight feet high by fifteen square. In this, silent, listening,
the sweating fugitives gathered.

The temperature was here oppressive, and the lamps burned blue with
some kind of gas that stifled the lungs. Gas and smoke together, made
breathing hard. A dull, roaring sound had begun to make itself vaguely
audible, the past few minutes; and as the Legionaries stood listening,
this was now rather plain to their ears.

"This is a devil of a place for a multi-millionaire, I must say!"
Bohannan exploded. Simonds laughed, with tense nerves. One or two
others swore, bitterly cursing the men of El Barr.

The Master, "Captain Alden," and Leclair, however, gave no heed.
Already they were peering around, at the black walls where now only an
occasional thread of gold was to be seen.

Five openings led out of this singular chamber, all equally dark,
narrow, formidable.

"This seems to be a regular labyrinth, my Captain," said Leclair, in
French. "Surely a trap of some kind. They are clever, these Arabs.
They let the mouse run and hope, then--_voilà_--he is caught!"

"It looks that way. But we're not caught yet. These infernal
passageways are all alike, to me. We must choose one. Well--this is as
good as any." He gestured toward an aperture at the left. "Men, follow
me!"

The passage they now entered was all of rock, with no traces whatever
of gold. For a few hundred feet its course was horizontal; then it
plunged downward like the first.

And almost immediately the temperature began to mount, once more.

"Faith, but I think we'd better be getting back!" exclaimed the major.
"I don't care much for this heat, or that roaring noise that's getting
louder all the time!"

"You'll follow me, or I'll shoot you down!" the Master flung at him,
crouching around. "I've had enough insubordination from _you_, sir!
Not another word!"

The stooping little procession of trapped Legionaries once more went
onward, downward. The muffled roar, ahead of them, rose in volume as
they made a final turning and came into a much more spacious vault
where moisture goutted from the black walls. A thin, steamy vapor was
rising from the floor, warm to the bare feet.

A moment the Legionaries stood there, blinking in the vague lamplight,
glad of the respite that permitted them to straighten up and ease
cramped muscles.

"No way out of _here_!" Bohannan grumbled. "Sure, we're at the end o'
nowhere. Now if we'd only taken another passage--"

Nobody paid him any heed. The major's exhibition of irrational greed
had lost caste for him. Even Lebon, the orderly, curled a lip of scorn
at him.

All eyes were eagerly searching for some exit from this ultimate pit.
Panting, reeking with sweat, fouled with blood and dirt, the doomed
men shuffled round the vault, blinking with bloodshot eyes.

No outlet was visible. The vault seemed empty. But all at once,
Bristol uttered a cry.

"Wine-sacks, by the living jingo!" he exclaimed.

"Wine-sacks--in a Moslem city?" demanded the Master. "Impossible!"

"What else are these, sir?" the Englishman asked, pointing.


The Master strode to the corner where he stood, and flared his lamp
over a score of distended goat-hides.

"Well, by Allah!" he ejaculated.

"Sacrificial wine," put in Leclair, at his elbow. "See the red seals,
with the imprint of the star and crescent, here and here?" He touched
a seal with his finger. "Rare old wine, I'll wager!"

"Wine!" gulped the major, whose excitable nerves had been frayed to
madness. "Wine, by God! Faith, but it's the royal thirst I have on me!
Who's got a knife?"

The Master thrust him back with such violence that he slipped on the
wet floor and nearly fell.

"You'll get no knife, sir, and you'll drink no sacrificial wine!" he
cried, with more of anger in his voice than any of the Legion had yet
heard. "The jewels--yes, I gave you your fool's way, on those. But no
wine!

"We of the Flying Legion are going to die, sober men! There'll be no
debauchery--no tradition handed down among those Moslem swine that
they butchered us, drunk. If any of you men want to die right now,
broach one of those wine-sacks!"

His simitar balanced itself for action. The glint in his eye, by the
wavering lamp-shine, meant stern business. Not a hand was extended
toward the tautly distended sacks.

Bohannan's whispered curse was lost in a startled cry from Wallace.

"Here's something!" he exclaimed. "Look at this ring, will you?"

They turned to him, away from the wine-bags. Wallace had fallen to his
knees and was scraping slime from the wet floor--the slime of ages of
dust mingled with viscid moisture from the steam that, thinly blurring
the dark air, had condensed on the walls and run down.

Emilio thrust down the lamp he held. There on the stone floor, they
saw a huge, rust-red iron ring that lay in a circular groove cut in
the black granite.

This ring was engaged in a metal staple let into the stone. And now,
as they looked more closely, and as some Legionaries scraped the floor
with eager hands, a crack became visible in the floor of the vault.

"Look out, men!" the Master cautioned. "This may be a trap that will
swing open and drop us into God knows what! Stand back, all--take your
time, now! Go slow there!"

They heeded, and stood back. The Master himself, assuming all risks,
got down on hands and knees and explored the crack in the floor. It
was square, with a dimension of about five feet on the edge.

"It's a trap-door, all right," he announced. "And we--are going to
open it!"

"One would need a rope or a long lever to do that, my Captain," put
in Leclair. "It is obvious that a man, or men, standing on the trap,
could not raise it. And it is too large to straddle."

The Master arose, stripped off his tunic and passed it through
the ring. He twisted the tunic and gave one end to the lieutenant.
Himself, he took the other.

"Get hold, everybody!" he commanded. "And be sure you're not standing
on the trap!"

All laid hold on the ends of the coat. With a "One, two,
three!" from the Master, the Legionaries threw all their muscle into
the lift. "Now, men! Heave her once more!"

The stone gave. The Legionaries doubled their efforts, with panting
breath, feet that slipped on the dank floor, grunts of labor.

"Heave her!"

Up swung the stone, aside. It slid over the wet rock. There, in its
place, gaped a black hole that penetrated unknown depths.

Steam billowed up--or rather, vapor distinctly warm to the touch. And
from very far below, much louder boomed the roar of rushing waters.
The Legionaries knew, now, what had caused the dull, roaring sound.
Unmistakably a furious cascade was boiling, swirling away, down there
at undetermined distances of blackness.

The boldest men among the little group of fugitives felt the crawl and
fingering of a very great dread at their hearts. Behind them lay the
labyrinth, with what pitfalls none could tell and with the Jannati
Shahr men perhaps already penetrating into the crypt. Around them
loomed the black, wet walls of this lowest stone dungeon with but one
other exit--the pit at their feet.

The Master threw himself prone on the slippery floor, took one of the
lamps and lowered it, by the chain, to its capacity. Smoke and vapor
arose about his head as he peered down.

"Well, what is it?" demanded Bohannan, also squinting down, as he bent
over the hole. "What do you see?"